The Bigger they are, the harder they fall

We have all heard the cliché ‘The Bigger they are, the harder they fall’. Some recent research backs this up. Jennifer Marr and Stefan Thau in the Academy of Management Journal looked at how high status individuals coped with drops in performance.

Marr and Thau suggest that the people with the bigger reputations find it more difficult to work through and deal with a an episode of poor performance. Part of their research involved a field study of professional baseball players. They found that although low-status players’ performance quality was unaffected by status loss, the quality of high-status players’ performance declined significantly after losing status. Guys who were not very well regarded were not that bothered about a poor performance but the marquee players took it much worse. If you are a golfer, think Tiger Woods or Padraig Harrington.

In a way this makes complete sense. Individuals who have the pressure of being the best in their field have more much more to lose when their form dips. Their professional ranking, commercial value, earning potential etc make the stakes pretty high compared to the low achievers who may have very little to lose from a bad day out.

However, there is more than professional ranking and commercial opportunities at play here. High status individuals also have more of their own identity mixed in with their achievements. Being World No.1 or a top professional athlete is part of their identity as a person. When this is threatened or removed then who they are in the eyes of the public and how they see their own identity is potentially damaged.

This can also have lessons for the work place. If a sales person is hitting record targets and is employee of the year one year but then runs into a dry spell the next year, their performance can really dip and fall off a cliff. Like the baseball players or golfers, they come under professional and personal pressures that threaten both their livelihood and identity.

It is not all bad news. Marr and Thau found that self-affirmation restored the quality of high-status individuals’ performance after a dip. Getting them to remember that they still have the skills, ability and track record to be successful makes a difference. To use another sporting cliché ‘You don’t become a bad player over night’.

So keep an eye on your star performers and if you see a dip, remind them that they still have it, they are still good at what they do and their worth as professionals or as individuals is not damaged. The dip will hopefully only be a glitch and your star performer will quickly get their ‘A Game’ back on track. 

The Smart Look - Eye Contact

We go to great lengths to put our best foot forward in meetings and demos. We get the agenda right, have all the props in place, make sure the environment is up to scratch and we are quick to remind our audience of our capabilities and track record.

This however may not be enough. A study at Northeastern University looked at how people rate our intelligence and capabilities. They found that making eye contact with the audience is key. The researchers had people watch short videos of strangers talking to each other. They were then asked to rate the intelligence of the strangers in the video. People in the video who made more eye contact while chatting were perceived as more intelligent.

This ties in with research from the University of Michigan which found that people who avoided eye contact were rated as socially awkward, deceptive and insincere. Interestingly though this was for men rather than women. Women who avoided eye contact were seen as unattractive and disagreeable. Not good results for either gender.

So even if you get the presentation right, the pricing right, making good eye contact is an important part of sealing the deal. You need to get the intelligence and sincerity message across.

While on the subject of perceived intelligence, being well dressed and looking good is a perquisite. Research by Zebrowitz and colleagues is one of many studies to establish a link between attractiveness and how smart people think we are. People who are seen as attractive are also seen as more intelligent. Scrub up, wear the good suit and make eye contact, you can’t lose.

Motivation via The Goal Gradient Effect

Charting progress is important. If you are a software developer, keep a list of the bugs you fix and knock them off one by one. If you are cold calling, keep track of the calls made and hopefully a few sales too. This sounds a bit obvious, we are likely to track work we have completed. The point here however is that it’s a good idea to visually display the work completed as progress, so you can see a list or some other evidence that you are getting places. This is known as the Goal Gradient Effect.

An article on Business Insider explains this in a neat way. It cites a study in the Journal of Market Research which looked at a coffee shop that uses frequent buyer cards. Regular customers were given frequent buyer cards. Each time they bought a cup of coffee they got their card stamped. When the card was filled they got a free cup of coffee. However there were two different scenarios:

Card A: The card had 10 boxes for the stamps, and when you get the card all the boxes are blank.

Card B: The card had 12 boxes for the stamps, and when you get the card the first two boxes are already stamped.

The research looked at how long it would take to get the card filled. Would it take longer or shorter for scenario A vs. scenario B? After all, you would have to buy 10 cups of coffee in both scenarios in order to get the free coffee. So does it make a difference which card you use?

The results say it does. Card B gets filled faster than Card A. It is the Goal-Gradient Effect in action.

The goal-gradient effect was first noticed in research with rats where they would run faster as they got to the end of the maze and closer to their food reward.

The goal-gradient effect makes us accelerate our behaviour as we get closer to our goal.

The take-way here could be these two points. Firstly, the closer we get to our goal the more motivated we are. Therefore structuring peoples work schedule (to have goals tangibly close and not weeks or months away) or sales targets becomes an important part of ensuring people are motivated and pushing themselves.

Secondly, the progression towards a goal can be an illusion or contrived (as shown the in coffee shop research). Giving someone a ‘head start’ or making it look like you can start progressing straight away improves motivation. Getting back to the software developer, give them some short ‘easy’ bugs first to get the ball rolling. For the cold caller, have the early targets based on getting the sales script right rather than closing any sales.

For the marketing people, maybe the coffee shop customer behaviour has lessons for how we distribute loyalty card points or explain bulk purchase schemes. We like our goals, almost as much as our coffee. 

No time like the present

We are biased to getting our pleasures in life in the here and now. This is known as the ‘Present Bias’. Unlike the kids who could resist the marshmallow in Walter Mischels experiment, most of us are unwilling to put off getting what we want. Economists have noted this and describe the effect as Hyperbolic Discounting.

Essentially it means we are suckers for a discount now or a low ball entry price, even if the long term price is pretty high.

A 1998 study by Read and van Leeuwen investigated this by asking participants to make food choices for today and for next week. When it came to next week, 74% of participants decided on fruit. But when thinking about today, 70% chose chocolate. Putting off the treat was not on the menu.

Getting back to the economists, their modelling of this has influenced how many services and goods are presented to us. You can get a new iPhone for a really low price but must sign an 18 month contract with a minimum monthly package. Getting the iPhone now is very attractive, though the long term cost over 18 months can be quite expensive. Similarly you will hear advertisements for new cars which only cost €100 per week. Again, that sounds very attractive, though the long term part of the deal is often based on Hire Purchase or relatively high interest rates.

The take away here is that we fall for the ‘get it now, pay later’ deals. Like the participants in Read and van Leeuwen’s study, we are more concerned about today than next week. We are willing to spoil our present selves at the expense of our future selves.

If you are selling, then tap into this Present Bias or Hyperbolic Discounting, if you are buying, be wary of the discount offers and try to think a little more long term.

Compliance is all about Freedom

We all try different persuasion techniques from time to time. It could be to get a sale, to get a colleague to swap shifts or to get a buddy to go for a beer. You may have some tricks or techniques that you think work better than others.

There is one technique however that seems to work best of all. It is the “but you are free” (BYAF) compliance-gaining technique. This operates by telling the target that he or she can refuse the request.

The key thing here is reminding people of their freedom to choose. By emphasising their freedom you are letting them know that it is OK to say No and you are not forcing them into anything. They have a free choice.

Christopher J. Carpenter reviewed 42 psychology studies (covering 22,000 people) using this technique. His meta-analysis showed that this simple idea can be pretty effective. Across all the studies it was found to double the chances that someone would say ‘yes’ to the request.

The meta-analysis shows how people donate more to good causes, are more likely to partake in surveys or lend someone the bus fare if they are caught short.

Try it for yourself, I think it's a good idea but it's up to you.

Truth & Photos

Ever been in a position where you were designing a brochure and wondered whether you should put in a particular photo? You might have decided against it because you felt a generic photo might look bland or you had trouble getting a photo that fitted well with the point you were trying to make.

It turns out that the choice of photo might not really matter that much, the important thing is to have a photo and almost any kind will do.

The BPS reports on a study involving New Zealand and Canadian students which found that including a photo with a statement made us more inclined to believe a statement accompanying the photo was true. The participants were given a series of statements saying if well known and obscure celebrities were either dead or alive. As fast as they could, without compromising their accuracy, the students had to say whether each statement was true or not. Crucially, half the statements were accompanied by a photo of the relevant celebrity and half weren't.

The statements with the photo were rated more likely to be true. As the researchers put it, the presence of the photo seemed to "inflate truthiness".

Another study with 70 New Zealand undergrads was similar but this time uninformative photos accompanied obscure general knowledge facts. For example, "Macademia nuts are in the same evolutionary family as peaches" was presented alongside a photo of macadamia nuts that provided no clues as to the veracity of the statement. The same effect was found - the students were more likely to wager that a fact was true when it was accompanied by an uninformative photo

So if you are designing a brochure and have testimonials that say your software is best of breed or your customer service has an approval rating of 99% or your deliveries are always on time, include a photo of a PC, Customer Service Agent or Delivery Guy. Generic non-descript photos are no problem, it need not be actual people or items. People will be more likely to rate your claim as true.

The same could be true for how you design websites, how politicians design election material or how you organise your eBay shop or any other on-line profile you may have. Any kind of photo will "inflate” the "truthiness" of your proposition. Guess I should have included a photo as part of this post.

Who is Trustworthy?

Who do you trust? Why? How much do you know about trust? It is worth thinking about. Trust shapes how we conduct our relationships, who we work with, many of the choices we make. Trust plays a part in big moments in our lives. It’s there when we sign a contract, make a large purchase or exchanging wedding vows.

So given the importance of trust, is there anything we can do to generate it? A study by researchers at Harvard Business School and Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania suggests that if you want people to see you as trustworthy, try apologising for situations outside of your control. This could be simply the weather or a delayed bus or a traffic jam.

The researchers had a male actor approach 65 strangers (30 women) at a train station on a rainy day to ask to borrow their mobile phone. Pretty big ask from a complete stranger, particularly given how we value our smart phones these days. Crucially, for half of them he preceded his request with the superfluous apology: "I'm sorry about the rain!" The other half of the time he just came straight out with his request: "Can I borrow your phone?" The superfluous apology made a real difference. Forty-seven per cent of strangers offered their phone when the actor apologised for the rain first, compared with just nine per cent when there was no apology. That is a big win for the fairly useless apology.

In a different angle, an often quoted study by Professor William Hampes in the Europe Journal ofPsychology looked at the relationship between humour and trust. It found that those who scored high on a test that measured their sense of humour for social purposes were considered more trustworthy. Humour and trust are key components of emotional intelligence and are associated with satisfying and healthy interpersonal relationships. Plenty of arguments have been defused by a well timed joke or a humorous explanation. It could also be that people who can tell a joke are a bit more likeable and therefore we are open to trusting them.

On the other side of the coin, if you are wondering who you can trust then go with your initial reaction. Research led by David DeSteno at Northeastern University suggests that when it comes to deciding whom to trust, our first impressions can be quite accurate. Trustworthiness is linked to specific kinds of non-verbal cues and we are hard-wired to pick up on these and recognise trustworthy people.

So if you need to earn trust with someone you have just met, try out these options. Crack a few jokes and find something to apologise about. It works, trust me.

Mood for thought

There is a radio station in Ireland that kicks off its afternoon drive time program with the presenter waffling on about a daily ‘happiness index’. I always thought this was a bit bland and a gimmick. After all, who keeps or compiles this happiness index and how could it possibly mean anything?

I then read something which put me thinking. Researchers at the University of Manchester and Indiana University have put some science behind this idea of  ‘sentiment tracking’.

They looked at how global emotion and mood, as measured via something like Twitter, could predict stock market activity. They investigated whether measurements of collective mood states derived from large scale Twitter feeds, correlated to the value of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) over time. They analyzed the text content of daily Twitter feeds by two mood tracking tools, OpinionFinder that measures positive vs. negative mood and Google-Profile of Mood States (GPOMS)

Their results indicated that the accuracy of DJIA predictions can be significantly improved by the inclusion of specific public mood dimensions. If you want to predict closing prices on the Dow Jones, have an eye on the Twitter feed.

This raises some interesting questions about how we look at social media data or activity. It may justify a more qualitative approach. When it comes to social media marketing, we may need to look at how our followers feel, rather than just counting them. 

This type of index should make us stop and think about how we interpret the holy grail of Big Data. Does this happiness index change with the weather?, with a regions sporting success? and if so does that affect stock markets or consumer spending? Which is cause and which is effect? Plenty for the self proclaimed big data scientists to ponder there. 

Wish you were here

I came across an interesting BPS Research Digest post which looked at a study by Belgian psychologist Saartje Cromheecke.

Working with a Belgian technology company Cromheecke’s  team sent out a real job opportunity to 1,997 potential applicants. Half got the standard email we all see every day and the other half got a hand-written postcard showing a coffee mug and a blank daily agenda. The email and postcard message featured the same layout and included the same written information and content about the job vacancy. Both type of applicants now had the same chance to apply.

Over all 62 of the those contacted applied for the job. But 82% of them had received the postcard, just 18% had received the email. Put another way, only 1% of those emailed actually applied for the job compared with 5% of those who received a postcard. Follow up research also suggested that respondents to the postcard tended to be better educated, consistent with the researchers' prediction that a recruitment message sent via a "strange" medium will be more likely to grab the attention of better-qualified personnel who aren't actively looking for new opportunities.

The BPS post does make the important point that Cromheecke's team aren't saying that postcards will always be the answer. Rather, "this field experiment puts forth 'media strangeness' as a more general evidence-based principle, which recruiters might take into account when selecting media for communicating job postings."

Recruitment aside, this could also play a role in other customer or client contact situations. Would potential targets respond better to a postcard or some other ‘strange media’ than an email? Would you be better off sending a special offer on a cup, coaster, postcard? The ‘strange media’ does not have to be the last word in graphic design, it just has to be different and convey the necessary information.

If you get the time, try it out. For the price of a few postcards you could see the improved response levels Cromheecke's team did. If they relied on email, they would have had nothing like 62 candidates to choose from. 

People still buy from people

We have all heard the cliché ‘People buy from people’, in other words, being able to personally connect with your client really matters. Yet many organisations send sales people into the market with this personal connection way down their list of priorities.

An example of this would include meeting time wasted on overly complex power point presentations that quite frankly bore people (even if it is all true). There is too much thought put into the pitch not not enough into the people you will be interacting with. Other examples are tactics employed by ‘inside sales’ teams where social media or other on-line tools are used to inform and connect with clients or prospects. These include tweets, special offer emails, circulating white papers, hosting webinars. While they may convey a very credible sales pitch or business case, these channels lack real personal context. 

I recently read a paper in the Journal of Applied Psychology which looked at interview candidates seeking employment. When candidates completed an interview they answered a series of questions on how they behaved, if they made eye contact, if they had demonstrated a keen interest in the company or job. The interviewers also answered a number of questions on what they thought of the candidate, their skills, if they would be hired.

For those that did get hired, the interviewers did not necessarily go for the best skilled or prepared. They went for ‘pleasant people’. They hired people they liked. People they connected with. Answers to complex technical questions or specific skills mattered less than how the candidates came across.

This is in line with the ‘People buy from people’ school of thought and no great surprise. What struck me however is that the paper was 10 years old (2004) and rather than that making the findings less relevant, the opposite is perhaps the case.

It is not unusual to do sales meeting on-line, via Skype or via a webinar. When we are not physically meeting there is less ad hoc personal interaction than there would be in a ‘real’ meeting, the handshake, the small talk when taking seats, chatting when waiting for someone else to join.

So if you do meet or sell on-line, still try to fit in some of the small talk rather than sticking to the webinar script. Perhaps make it your business to phone someone up with the meeting confirmation or check if they got the log in details. While technically this may be unnecessary, it could be your opportunity to kick off some small talk, be nice and come across as a pleasant person. Technology aside people still buy from people. Don’t let the on-line line omni-channel world get in the way of that, it’s not an either or scenario. Make that connection. 

Unfriending online matters in the real world

Well, whatever your views on social media etiquette, it appears that online rejection has real world consequences. A study from the University of Colorado Denver suggests that you need to be prepared for the real life cold shoulder when you reject online.

In their research, 40 percent of people surveyed said they would avoid in real life anyone who unfriended them on Facebook. Thankfully, some 50 percent said they would not avoid the person and the remaining 10 percent were unsure.

So be a bit more careful turning down friend requests or cutting ties online when it comes to clients and work colleagues. They could be in the 40% that take it rather badly. While it is a minority, it is a sizeable one.

The weather is not just small talk

So, are you one for checking the weather forecast on a regular basis? We all like good weather at weekends so we can get out doors and blow off some steam. During the week we like to make sure that we wear the right clothes going to work and have our raincoat or umbrella if we need it.

It turns out however, the weather also affects how we think. It does not have to be as extreme as Seasonal Affective Disorder (S.A.D.) It can affect us in far more subtle ways. 

I recently came across a 2009 study which showed that in something as specific as job interview performance it can have a real impact. The study analyzed the results of  medical-school interviews at the University of Toronto between 2004 and 2009. People interviewed on rainy days received a one per cent lower score than those interviewed on sunny days. While it seems small, the difference in scores was equivalent to a ten per cent lower total mark on the Medical College Admission Test for the university.  

The paper suggests that the mood of those conducting the interviews is lowered by the poor weather. This literally dampens their thinking when they score their candidates. If this is the case then the same cognitive influence could be at play when you have a salary review, when you try to close a big sale with a customer or when you gather some marketing material such as customer surveys. It may also play a role in performance of focus groups or any other setting where people subjectively score performance based on how they feel about it.

Try to pick a nice day for your review or that important sales meeting. If things don't work out and you are fresh out of other excuses, dodge the bullet by blaming the weather.

Make the first move

When it comes to negotiating, many people believe that it's usually best not to make the first offer. They wait for the other guy to say how much he is willing to give or ask for. A lot of people assume that by encouraging the other person to make the first offer, they gain an information advantage.

This assumption however isn't quite right. Adam Galinsky, at Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management has looked at the research and found that: “more often than not, negotiators who make first offers come out ahead.”

One explanation for this is ‘anchoring’, which we have discussed in previous posts. The first offer act as an 'anchor'.  Once the first offer is made, that becomes the focal point and it gets more difficult to get it off the table and discuss a completely new number. We end up spending the negotiation trying to adjust the opening offer.

This was well demonstrated in an experiment by Greg Northcraft and Maggie Neale at the University of Arizona.  They got experienced real estate agents to inspect and estimate the independent value of a house. In what appeared to be accidental, the estate agents saw one of two different price lists for the house in question. The price list was done up by someone else. Half of the agents saw a listing price of $119,900. These agents then estimated that the house would sell for just over $114,000. The other half of the agents saw a listing price of $149,900, and they came in at a figure of $128,000. The list price should have been irrelevant but it anchored their appraisal and valuation.

So when it comes to negotiation, don't be afraid to ‘play your card first’ and put a number on the table. You don't want to spend the negotiation process counteracting the other sides opening offer and not get the chance to explain your number and its worth.

Network like a Spy

When it comes to networking, any good sales executive will seize the opportunity to go to a particular conference where the speakers are the go to guys in their given industry. It makes sense to get their take on what is happening, where future trends are headed. It is also very likely that there will be a good calibre of delegates in attendance to hear the gurus message. All that makes for great networking possibilities.

None of this is news. When it comes to networking, we have the rule of thumb, the more important people we can meet the better. The higher up you can network in your industry the better.

Consider another complementary approach. Network downwards. In her book ‘Work Like a Spy: Business Tips from a Former CIA Officer’ J.C. Carleson explains how it pays to establish relationships at all levels, from the secretary who can choose whether or not to put your call through, to the software developer who can give you the inside track on those quality control issues. The most effective networks are far-reaching in all directions, up and down.

So take time to get to know the admin staff, the delivery guys, in your own organisation and your clients organisations. There is more to networking than hob knobbing it at conferences.

Potentially Important

It’s possible that this is the most useful article you will read all year. If that opening got your attention, then your reaction matches a number of  studies which show that we're charmed and enthralled by someone saying what they can achieve. We're suckers for ‘Potential’.

This has real applications for sales and recruitment. We often lead with or dedicate large sections of websites and brochures to our past achievements. These can be awards we have won, ISO accreditation, academic credentials of key staff, large prestigious clients we have worked for, large numbers of current customers.  We spend a lot of time saying "Look what we have done”. Similarly on our CVs we spend most of it saying where we worked, how well we did in college or some other achievement. It’s all about the track record.

It turns out, this approach may not be always right. A paper published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,  by Zakary Tormala and Jayson Jia at Stanford and Michael Norton at Harvard Business School, tested the appeal of potential in a number of experiments with  hundreds of volunteers.

Their research showed that people playing the role of basketball coach preferred young novice players with great potential over an established player with a sound record. They were also willing to pay the young potential star more than the proven pro. Similar preferences were borne out for recruiting managers who went for potential leaders rather than guys who had been there and done it.

In an experiment that could be directly applied to your Social Media marketing campaigns, the researchers tested the effectiveness of ads on Facebook for 8 days for a real US comedian called Kevin Shea. Advertisements that played up Shea's potential ("he could be the next big thing") generated more click-throughs and "likes" than ads that highlighted his achievements ("he is the next big thing").

When you hear lotto companies advertising, they will always say how much the jackpot is heading towards in the next draw and 'it could be you'. Only rarely in regular advertising do they highlight the track record on wins. Whatever about your awareness of the actual odds involved, the lotto ticket is all about potential.

The authors do however, qualify the influence of potential by saying you can’t expect high potential to compensate for a genuinely poor track record and truly outstanding achievements (they mention winning an Olympic medal) would outperform potential.

The point remains, if you are going for an interview, emphasise the potential you can bring with you to the new job, don’t just rest on the laurels of past achievements. Just because you have loads of great customers and reference sites for your current product, don’t expect this to be enough. Sell the potential of how your product could transform the lives of your customers. What you have done should only be part of the story. Then like Kevin Shea, you could be the next big thing.

Photos, your Good Side

So, spent time in the past going through your photos, wondering which one to put on your social media profile, which one to put on your CV or which wedding portrait to hang on the wall? Choosing is not easy, but here is something that may help.

Your best photo or portrait may be the one showing your left cheek, according to a study by Kelsey Blackburn and James Schirillo from Wake Forest University in the US. Their work shows that images of the left side of the face are perceived and rated as more pleasant than pictures of the right side of the face, possibly due to the fact that we present a greater intensity of emotion on the left side of our face.

We are always judging human emotions using facial expressions. Our highly specialised facial muscles are capable of expressing many unique emotions. A quick glance can tell if someone is happy or sad. Good actors have a range of facial expressions for almost every emotion.

Research suggests that the left side of the face is more intense and active during emotional expression. It is also striking that Western artists' portraits predominantly present subjects' left profile. The Blackburn and Schirillo study investigated whether there are differences in the perception of the left and right sides of the face in real-life photographs of individuals. They go on to explain: "Our results suggest that posers' left cheeks tend to exhibit a greater intensity of emotion, which observers find more aesthetically pleasing. Our findings provide support for a number of concepts – the notions of lateralized emotion and right hemispheric dominance with the right side of the brain controlling the left side of the face during emotional expression."

Participants were asked to rate the pleasantness of both sides of male and female faces on gray-scale photographs. They found a strong preference for left-sided portraits, regardless of whether the pictures were originally taken of the left side, or mirror-reversed. The left side of the face was rated as more aesthetically pleasing for both male and female posers.

So if you are picking a photo for your on-line profile, or using a picture of a staff member in a poster, or using models to advertise clothes or a beauty product, keep to the left sided photos. It is your good side.

How Popular is your new phone?

Ever bought a new car or got a new phone and suddenly noticed loads of other people did too. Everywhere you go you see the same car or phone being used by someone else.

Psychologists call this the Observational Selection Bias. It occurs when we suddenly start noticing things we didn't notice that much before and then wrongly assume that the frequency has increased i.e. that these cars or phones are more popular or selling better than they really are.

Pregnant women often report seeing a lot more pregnant women around them, though statistically the number of pregnant women won't have changed much.

Once we select an item in our mind, for whatever reason, we start noticing it more often.

This is pretty harmless, except that we believe the increased frequency of the item is true. We can then wrongly assume that one type of car is out selling another or one type of phone is now the market leader, when neither is the case.

So next time you get something new and start to think loads of other people have made the same purchase as you, think again. That latest phone you got may not be as popular as you think.

As an aside, I wonder if that played a role in people buying shares in Apple? If I had an iPhone I might start to notice more iPhones than HTC or Samsung and assume iPhone sales are holding up better than they actually are

What colour is your company?

Colour is all around us. It is one of the first things we notice about most things we see and it can be combined in ways to please, disgust and fascinate us. It is also heavily used by organisations to get themselves noticed and create the ‘right’ impression. Market researchers have had a field day identifying the colours and the likely effect they have upon us.

Have you noticed that most fast food restaurants are decorated with bright reds and oranges (Mc Donalds, Pizza Hut, Burger King, KFC)? It's no accident that these colours show up so frequently. Marketing companies long maintain that reds and oranges encourage diners to eat quickly and leave, and that's exactly what fast food outlets want you to do. The idea is that warm colours stimulate the desire to eat and you don't linger for too long.

Fifty Shades of Grey aside, it's also no accident that you see a lot of reds and blacks in how adult material is advertised or packaged. These colours are thought to have sexual connotations. These colour schemes are also used in lingerie, adult shop branding and appear on many greeting cards (check out the Valentines ranges).

However, the effects of colour differ among different cultures, so the attitudes and preferences vary. For example, white is the colour of death in Chinese culture, but purple represents death in Brazil. Yellow is sacred to the Chinese, but signifies sadness in Greece and jealousy in France. In North America, green is typically associated with jealousy. People from tropical countries respond most favourably to warm colours; people from northern climates prefer the cooler colours. You will have seen some of this in HSBC ads where they claim to ‘think global but act local’. If you are designing a web site to attract Chinese tourists, less of the white and more of the yellow it seems.

Market researchers have also determined that colour affects shopping habits. You can see this by looking at the promotional material and web sites belonging to companies with marketing budgets that allow for extensive research into what sells best. Have a look at the websites of Jaguar, Gucci, Rolex. There's a common predominance of black or dark green (sophistication) and silver/dark grey (prestige). These companies market to people with high incomes who view themselves as sophisticated and look for a prestigious vehicle or accessory. You will notice this black / silver combination on newspaper ads for expensive high status luxuries such as jewellery and accessories. The more up market credit cards aimed at a similar market segment are also black or silver/grey.

Leslie Harrington, from The Colour Association marketing company suggests color is not an artistic choice or preference, but a grounded business decision.  Harrington points out the following example. When Volkswagen came out with the new Beetle some years ago, most of the billboards pictured a neon green Beetle, which was a car color few people had seen before. However, that color was authentic to the ideas VW was trying to communicate: a new and fresh take on an old concept. "It really resonated with the customer," she says. "It allowed VW to communicate in the ad what they were all about, even though most customers bought the usual blue or red."

This example also demonstrates another element of color psychology, called the "pink purse syndrome," basically, you put a pink purse in the window to get customers to come into the shop where they buy the black one.

Take another area many of us are familiar with, Social Media. Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn all use different shades of blue in their logos. Scientists at the University of British Columbia led by Ravi Mehta have found that the colour blue makes us feel more creative and receptive to ideas. One scientist remarked that blue “encourages motivation” and that people think of more creative solutions to problems. Blue was associated with intellect and trustworthiness, making it an ideal colour for innovative communication.

Take a second look and you will notice these colour schemes all around you, for those among us who are colour blind, that’s another story. Marketing and psychology guys are still working on that. It’s a grey area.

Not enough Dirty Money around?

In the current financial crisis being experienced in several countries, a key objective is to stimulate domestic demand. To get people spending.

In the US we have quantitative easing  and other countries have various minimum lending targets in recapitalised banks for mortgages and small business. The idea is that finance 'trickles down' to the consumer. Saving rates in many cases are too high and people are keeping their wallets closed. Economic growth is suffering.

Research published in the  Journal of Consumer Research by Professors Fabrizio Di Muro and Theodore Noseworthy may have put forward an idea that can help the situation .They found we spend old or filthy bank-notes more freely than freshly-minted ones with dirty and clean bank-notes resulting in feelings of disgust and pride in equal measure.

They said: "The physical appearance of money can alter spending behaviour. Consumers tend to infer that worn bills are used and contaminated, whereas crisp bills give them a sense of pride in owning bills that can be spent around others."

We don't like the idea of touching something loads of other people have already handled. Deep down, if we get a crumpled worn bank note, we want to get rid of it.

In a number of studies, people were given either crisp or worn notes and were asked to do a few shopping trips. They tended to spend more with worn notes than with crisp new notes. They were also more likely to break a worn larger note than pay the exact amount in crisp lower denominations. We hold onto the nice looking change.

If they wanted to impress someone, they spent the new crisp notes. This shows a more personal relationship with money than its economic value.

So if you want to get people spending on the proverbial high street, give them back their change in worn notes and put the crisp ones to one side. If your kids ask you for money this weekend to go to the cinema, give them nice new notes. It will go a little further and they'll like it more.

Waiters, JR & Quiz Questions shows us how memory works

If ever wonder why bar staff, waiters and other busy front line staff can remember multiple orders? Practice, probably plays a part but there could also be another phenomenon at work , the Zeigarnik Effect.

It is named after Russian psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik. One day back in the 1930's Zeigarnik was in a busy cafe and noticed that the waiters had great memories for orders. Interestingly though, Zeigarnik noticed that the memory lasted only up until the orders had been delivered.

Once the food and drink had hit the table they forgot about it instantly, and were unable to recall what had been so clear moments before. Zeigarniks name is thus associated with the various problems where incomplete tasks stick in memory.

So how does this matter at work? Well perhaps if your work process requires someone to recall information after a task has finished, the results may not be very good, this could have implications for handovers between staff at shift change. Finished tasks may not be discussed or recalled very well compared to those still underway.

It could also have a role in sales. The Zeigarnik Effect is part of the reason why quiz shows are so compelling. Most of the time you won't care who won the World Cup 3rd place play off in 1986, but once someone has asked the question it becomes really irritating not to know the answer. Perhaps we could promote offers based on customers answering a set of questions on an app or a website.

People also better remember tasks they have been interrupted on but not finished. So if you want your sales material to be recalled, have it ask a difficult question or have an interruption to the story. We see this all the time in the final episode of most TV series where we are left wondering what’s going to happen. Once we get the answer we move on and forget. Many of us remember spending a summer wondering who shot JR (and years later Mr Burns in the Simpsons), most of us don't know the answer today.

I'll deliberately not tell you who won the 3rd place play off or who shot JR or Mr Burns but deep down bet you wish I did and maybe you will look it up yourself.